Peter Schiff made the statement that the smarter you were in the last year, the dumber you looked. What he meant is that if you had been invested in overvalued assets such as the stock market, you would have seen your investments rise; but, if you had not been invested in such assets, you probably would have seen lower returns. He also pointed to the speculative housing bubble and the transition to part-time jobs from full time as signs of economic weakness.

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Bear and precious metals expert Axel Merk argued for an even gloomier scenario. He contended that the market will crash and said he would rather be on the sidelines than in the market. He said furthermore that an asset-based recovery such as we have now can come easily undone–and thinks it will start to unravel during the next year.

Alec Green, one of the bulls, looked at the energy renaissance, tremendous innovation, and improvement in the housing market to help make his bullish case. The other bull, Don Smith, looked at the rate of inflation and interest rates in his more optimistic case for the market.

Who’s right, the bulls or the bears? Are Schiff and Merk’s arguments more compelling or Green and Smith’s?